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Written by Dale Woodard
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Tuesday, February 16 2010, 10:42 PM |
There’s still something for the Lethbridge Hurricanes to play for. The cold, hard Western Hockey League stats tell the cold, hard truth, a berth in the post season is most likely a pipe dream for the 'Canes, almost mathematically eliminated from the playoffs.
But as the 17-36-4-2 Hurricanes get set to host the Swift Current Broncos at 7 p.m. tonight at the Enmax Centre, pride remains front-and-centre as Lethbridge looks to perhaps play the role of the spoiler and, most importantly, give the teams they'll face on the remainder of their schedule a tough battle despite what their record says.
“There always is (something to play for),” said Hurricanes associate coach Matt Kabayama. “As a player you want to have respect. You want respect from your teammates and you want respect from the people that come watch you play and you want respect from your opponent. There’s nothing worse than your opponent disrespecting you. If you don’t come out with a good effort that’s what’s going to happen.”
The Hurricanes earned plenty of respect Saturday night as they battled the Eastern Conference-leading Saskatoon Blades.
As they’ve done all season when they’ve faced Saskatoon, the Hurricanes kept it close throughout, using a power play to take a 2-1 lead in the second period and then killing off a penalty in overtime before the Blades scored the winner with 58 seconds in overtime to pull out a 3-2 win.
But the ’Canes weren’t able to duplicate that effort on Sunday when the Calgary Hitmen pulled into town as Lethbridge fell behind 3-0 after the first period and 6-0 after 40 minutes.
While the Hurricanes avoided getting blanked with two third period goals, the damage had long since been done as the Hitmen posted the 6-2 win.
“You look at games that we’ve had trouble in and got a little bit out of hand is the start,” said Kabayama. “In games we’ve had good starts, we’ve been in all those games. We know we have difficulty putting the puck in the net and when you put yourself down 2-0 or 3-0 in the first 10 minutes of the game, it’s not that we can’t come back, but that’s a big uphill battle for us.
“It’s a different thing all the time. Since Christmas our starts have been good. As soon as we got back from Christmas we had good starts and were in every game. But it’s different things all the time. Sometimes we have a breakdown or other times the other team makes a great play or we get ourselves in penalty trouble. It’s been a combination of different things.”
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